Acer Swift X 16 review: the anti-MacBook Pro

Acer offers two configurations of the Swift X 16 (SFX16-61G to refer to the specific product). The entry-level model comes in at $1,250 for an AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS CPU, 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 GPU, and a 16.0-inch WQXGA IPS display running at up to 165Hz. For $1,600, the CPU is upgraded to a Ryzen 9 7940U, the GPU to an RTX 4050, and the display to a WQXGA+ OLED panel at up to 120Hz.

My Swift X 16 review unit used AMD’s latest Ryzen 9 7940HS, an 8-core/16-thread CPU running at up to 5.2GHz. It clocks between 35 and 54 watts, making it a strong competitor to Intel’s 45-watt chips. My review unit also equipped the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 running on Nvidia’s Studio drivers.

In our benchmarks, the Swift X 16 was competitive with laptops running the Intel Core i7-13700H and Core i9-13900H. That was particularly apparent in our Handbrake benchmark which encodes a 420MB video as H.265, and in the Cinebench R23 benchmark. The Swift X 16 also did well in the Pugetbench Premiere Pro benchmark, which runs in a live version of Adobe’s video editing app and uses the GPU to speed up certain tasks. Even with just an RTX 4050, the Acer was competitive with laptops running theoretically faster GPUs.

Overall, performance is a strength. The Swift X 16 will plow through the most demanding productivity workflows, and it will provide decent performance to less demanding creators. The Swift X 16 isn’t more than an entry-level gaming laptop, but it did manage around 80 frames per second in Fortnite at 1200p and epic graphics.

Unsurprisingly, the Swift X 16 didn’t get great battery life. It has a 76-watt-hour battery, which is on the low end for a large laptop, and its OLED display is power-hungry. But these results aren’t terrible for a machine that can handle demanding tasks, although if you’re mobile the large power brick will weigh you down.

Most OLED displays are uniformly excellent, looking great out of the box with dynamic colors, plenty of brightness, and deep, inky blacks. The Swift X 16’s high-res version is no different. It also benefits from a fast 120Hz refresh rate that makes Windows 11 a lot smoother, something that’s more common on recent displays.

According to my colorimeter, the Swift X 16’s panel is among the best we’ve tested. It was brighter than most, albeit not by that much, and its blacks were perfect with the incredible contrast we’ve come to expect from the technology. It stood out most in its colors, with a near-perfect score of 100% sRGB, 99% AdobeRGB, and 100% DCI-P3 coverage. Its accuracy was also excellent at a DeltaE of 0.70, well below the 1.0 mark where the human eye can no longer tell the difference. Note that my colorimeter wouldn’t return a contrast ratio value, which has happened with a number of OLED displays. But with perfect blacks, there’s no doubt that the Swift X 16’s display has the same deep contrast as other OLED panels.

This is a great display for productivity workers, creators, and media consumers. Acer offers a lower-resolution IPS panel running at up to 165Hz on the lower-power base model, but it’s worth the extra money for the OLED panel alone.

Two stereo speakers fire down from the front bottom of the chassis, and they’re surprisingly weak. That is, they put out minimal volume even when turned all the way up. Mids and clears are high and there’s a touch of bass, so that’s good. But if you want to entertain a group of people, you’ll want external speakers.

The Swift X 16 provides excellent performance for demanding productivity work and enough power to handle less creative workflows — especially for this price. Creators will have to spend a lot more to get significantly better performance, but for everyone else, the Swift X 16 is an affordable option.

It also offers enough quality to meet its premium price, and its OLED display is superb. The Swift X 16 is a solid choice in the growing field of 16-inch laptops.

Editors’ Recommendations